Professor G Balasubramanian’s Talk

Date
Tuesday, 10 October 2017

On 10th October, ALC was honored to invite Professor G Balasubramanian, Assistant Chancellor of Dravidian University, Andhra Pradesh, India, to give our students a talk regarding Tamil Language and Linguistics. This sharing session was aimed to give our student teachers a foundation of what linguistics is all about. His talk turned out to be an engaging dialogue with the students whereby he explained the basic terms in linguistics in an easily comprehensible way. Besides sharing about the linguistic terms, he also mentioned the significant features of a language with relevant examples. He helped to clear the grey area between language and linguistics by pointing out the differences and distinctive features of each. He made his sharing even more beneficial by making references to key findings from linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky. He also introduced many new terms such as “Structuralism”, “Duality of Pattern” to our students and explained them thoroughly.

He adopted a very informal and casual approach in his talk as he welcomed students to stop him and ask him any doubts that they might have. He provided students with numerous examples to ensure that they were able to follow along and grasp the concepts being mentioned. His examples were simple and something that the students were familiar with. This facilitated the learning of the students as they were able to easily assimilate the new information presented by him. He also mentioned and explained about the different fields of linguistics such as Bilingualism, Sociolinguistics and Dialects. Professor Balasubramanian’s sharing session was definitely enjoyable and fruitful for our student teachers who would be learning more about linguistics in their upcoming modules such as Phonology and Morphology.